NEED HELP BIG TIME!

Question

I wrote a few days ago about this and was told that gathering
information from a form using Post as the method and having the
results emailed to someone wasn't a good idea and that it didn't
work very well. People basically told me to investigate scripting
or hiring someone, or use a pay service like MailChimp. None of
these are options for me right now, I absolutely have to get this
site done tonight and the person I'm doing it for will not pay for
a service.
The client wants to have a form on his site to collect email
addresses so he can compile them into a mailing list to send out
infrequent emails notifying people of upcoming events he's putting
on. He's a local artist with a very modest following, nothing big
time. I have no idea about databasing or MySql, and the person
doesn't want to pay for a service, so basically I'm stuck doing it
the "unreliable" way.
Can someone walk me through how to do this in Dreamweaver? I
assume I add a form field, and put a text field and submit button
inside of it. Here's my questions, to get this to work and use the
mailto: thing, what do I put for...
Form Field: Name, Action, Method, Target, Enctype
Text Field: Name
Button: Type, Name, ID, Value
Any help would be greatly appreciated by one stressed out,
hack web designer, thanks!

Answer 1

If this client doesn't want to pay for a service then tell
him the best
you can do is gather INDIVIDUAL emails from his site and have
them
emailed to their email address. Then it's up to them to mail
out to
their modest following INDIVIDUALLY.
Basically you put a form on the site to collect the email
address of the
user. Like this:
<form name="emailForm" method="post"
action="formmail.php">
<p><label for="email">Enter email
address</label><br>
<input type="text" id="email" name="email"> </p>
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
</form>
You would then need to send the submitted form to a formmail
script
which will then send it on to the clients email address.
A free script named Formmail does exist if you search for it
in google
under Free formmail script
You would need to alter the script as per the instructions
which should
come with it and then upload it to your cgi-bin assuming you
have one on
your server.
You then point the form at the script by filling in the
action attribute
like:
<form name="emailForm" method="post"
action="
http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi">
I no longer use formmail because it can be a bit of an issue
to set up
for beginners.
I now tend to use server side scripting like php to gather
the
information. IF you have php running on your server then
NateMail is
FREE and very very simple script to set up. It comes with
clear pdf
instructions that will do the job in about 10-15mins.
http://www.mindpalette.com/scripts/index.php#NMAnchor
xslamx wrote:
> I wrote a few days ago about this and was told that
gathering information from
> a form using Post as the method and having the results
emailed to someone
> wasn't a good idea and that it didn't work very well.
People basically told me
> to investigate scripting or hiring someone, or use a pay
service like
> MailChimp. None of these are options for me right now, I
absolutely have to
> get this site done tonight and the person I'm doing it
for will not pay for a
> service.
>
> The client wants to have a form on his site to collect
email addresses so he
> can compile them into a mailing list to send out
infrequent emails notifying
> people of upcoming events he's putting on. He's a local
artist with a very
> modest following, nothing big time. I have no idea about
databasing or MySql,
> and the person doesn't want to pay for a service, so
basically I'm stuck doing
> it the "unreliable" way.
>
> Can someone walk me through how to do this in
Dreamweaver? I assume I add a
> form field, and put a text field and submit button
inside of it. Here's my
> questions, to get this to work and use the mailto:
thing, what do I put for...
>
> Form Field: Name, Action, Method, Target, Enctype
>
> Text Field: Name
>
> Button: Type, Name, ID, Value
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated by one stressed
out, hack web designer,
> thanks!
>